Folk dance

Folk dance, generally, a type of dance that is a vernacular, usually recreational, expression of a past or present culture. The term folk dance was accepted until the mid-20th century, when this and other categories of dance were questioned and their distinctions became subject to debate.

Peasant Dance, oil on wood by Pieter Bruegel the Elder, c. 1568; …

Courtesy of the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

For the purposes of this article, the designationfolk dance will be used for convenience, without the extended discussion of terms that a more scholarly treatment would require. It is important, however, to examine other ways to write and think about the types of dances that might be characterized as traditional. It is also essential to note that people in many non-Western cultures do not themselves describe any activity as dance in the way that English speakers do. This article examines possible ways to look at and define folk dance, how various groups might conceive of their dances, and how the study of folk dance was born and developed. See alsodance, for a general treatment of dance as an art form. For further treatment of the folk arts, seefolk music; folklore; folk literature; folk art.

What makes a dance a folk dance?

Logically speaking, the adjective folk should modify the noun dance to indicate a certain kind of dance and dancing and perhaps the style or some other distinguishing feature of the dance or performance. It should also imply who the performers are. However, the term folk dance, which has been in common use since the late 19th century, along with its parent term folklore, which was coined in 1846, is not as descriptive or uncontroversial as it might seem. Much of the problem lies in the attitudes and purposes of early scholars and their audience.

Usually, the designation folk was used by those who did not consider themselves to belong to the folk and were confident that they knew which other people were the folk. Some of these observers described folk communities with condescension as peasants, simple or quaint people who were illiterate and unselfconscious, carrying on supposedly “primitive” and ancient traditions. Such writers concluded that “true” folk dances were created anonymously and transmitted from person to person. Many scholars of the late 19th and early 20th centuries postulated a sort of Darwinian social evolution that passed from imagined beginnings through existing folk dances to arrive at modern recreational dances. This attitude was part of a larger worldview that sometimes went so far as to place certain other groups of people farther down the human evolutionary tree from themselves and their peers.

Not surprisingly, a backlash developed, and since the middle of the 20th century the word folk has often been avoided because of the condescending attitude its use is thought to represent. Many cultural groups around the world demanded that their performing arts not be characterized by the term. Thus, some archives and organizations found it expedient to change the word folk to traditional in their names. For example, in the 1960s the Folk Music Archives at Indiana University was renamed Archives of Traditional Music. Similarly, in 1980 the International Folk Music Council, a nonprofit organization supported by UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization), changed its name to International Council for Traditional Music. Its study section on dance broadened in scope from folk dance to ethnochoreology, the study of all dance forms in a culture.

Although many academics in the 21st century avoid any use of the word folk because of its past misuse and possible offensiveness, those who do accept the term often mean “traditional,” “authentic,” or “from olden times.” Those who want to avoid implying that culture is static may refuse to use any such categorical term.

The descriptors traditional and authentic are problematic too when applied to folk dances that are self-consciously developed, revived, and restaged for public display in order to reinforce a national identity, to attract tourists, or both. Examples include dances performed by the Bayanihan Philippine National Folk Dance Company and the numerous folklórico groups from Mexico. Neither does the word traditional comfortably identify dances that are transplanted from one context to another, such as the European folk dances performed by the Matachines Society of the Yaqui Indians of southern Arizona in the United States and Sonora, Mex. Nor do these terms include the fusions of folk dances from two or more cultures into new forms that represent newly established communities, such as the multicultural Israeli folk dances and the fused traditions of the Métis of Canada. These are discussed below.

Operational definitions

Of major significance, a point that is critical to the understanding of folk dance is the following fact: folk dance is not a universal genre of dance. When folk dances are compared from one culture to another, they have in common no universal movement, figure, form, style, or function. Neither does a specific movement, figure, form, style, or function identify a dance as a folk dance. The simplest approach to definition might be to say that folk dances are those dances identified with and performed by folk dancers. By the same reasoning, folk dancers are those persons who perform folk dances.

Yet these circular definitions are inadequate. Some persons who perform what outsiders define as folk dances do not themselves identify their dances as folk dances. And some persons who perform such dances do not identity themselves as folk dancers. Others reject the word folk entirely, as having nothing to do with who they are or what dances they do.

The matachines dances are a good example of how fluid the definitions of folk dance and folk dancers are. The Yaqui Indian Matachines Society is a group in northern Mexico and southern Arizona whose members continue to observe a sacred vow to dance their devotions for the Virgin Mary with medieval European folk dances taught to them after 1617 by Jesuit padres. These Yaqui do not think of their dances as folk dances, nor do they think of themselves as folk dancers, although persons from the outside readily make those assignments. Although the origins of the matachines dances of other parts of the Americas are similar, the dances themselves are different. To complicate matters further, in parts of Europe there are matachines folk dance groups that have nothing in common with the Yaqui society or the other American groups. What the dances are, who performs them, and what insiders and outsiders call the dances and the dancers—all these designations vary, although the dances are known by the same name.

Within any given society, there may or may not be multiple classifications of dance. If the performers and the observers characterize any dances as folk dances, then they are likely to identify other types of dance as well. If there is only one category of dance, it is unlikely to be labeled as folk dance or in any other particular way. European cultures have dances that are identity markers. Some examples include the Schuhplattler (“slap dance”) of Germany and Austria, the jota of Spain, the jig of Ireland, the tarantella of Italy, and the hopak (or gopak) of Ukraine. These dances are secular, recreational, and celebratory, and they are used as national identifiers. Such dances are effective in arousing national pride and sentiment.

The Druzhba amateur dance ensemble performing the Ukrainian …

Novosti/Sovfoto

Complex societies make distinctions between activities on the basis of their functions. Typically, anthropologists identify theological, aristocratic, educational, and economic institutions, often referred to as the temple, the court, the academy, and the market. Dances may be associated with each of these, and they influence the folk dances of a society. A common movement “vocabulary” often characterizes a culture as a whole, and a culture’s dances may have distinctive features. Even so, the dances will differ in style and function. As illustrations, the following paragraphs examine some of these aspects in Hawaiian dances, Korean dances, and European “character” dances.

Hawaiian dance

Hawaiian society has long had both formal classical dances and folk dances. Both categories include certain common characteristics—primarily the use of hand gestures that illustrate a song or chants and the flexed-knee stepping that gives the appearance of swaying hips. In pre-European days the dedicated hula dancer was trained in a sacred venue (hula halau). After a graduation ceremony (uniki) that authorized the dancer to move from the temple to the court, he or she was allowed to perform for the aristocracy.

European influences nearly destroyed the hula, but it was saved from extinction when it was redefined. The hula survived by association with the market and the academy. It thrived primarily as a tourist attraction in the first half of the 20th century. Then, with the so-called Hawaiian Renaissance, hula blossomed as an art form in the second half of the 20th century. Dances that are learned in the hula halau are not considered to be folk dances. Hawaiian folk dances are the casual, informal dances performed, often improvisationally, at a family gathering or other informal event. But all Hawaiian dances use characteristic movements that are associated worldwide with Hawaiian hula.

Korean dance

In modern Korea there are at least six different kinds of dance: court, folk, shamanistic, Confucian, Buddhist, and modern concert dance. Today these classifications usually refer to the style of dance rather than the occupation, class, or religion of the dancers. Korea has national dance academies that teach these forms. The dances and dance styles formerly restricted to royal audiences (the court) have become the Korean classical dances, and they are performed regularly in public concerts (the market). In conversation, Koreans classify their dances into four types: court, folk, sacred, and modern concert dance.

Many uniquely Korean gestures and body movements characterize all Korean dances (except for modern concert dance), regardless of classification. These characteristics include the sliding of each foot forward on the floor to end in an upturning of the toes (echoing the shape of the dancers’ slippers), the lifting and lowering of the shoulders, and the frequent use of triple metres in the music. Korean dance classifications are distinguished by style and content. Korean classical court dances tend to be slow in tempo, dignified and refined. Korean folk dances, on the other hand, are lively and earthy. They are performed for festivals and celebrations. One favourite folk dance is the farmers’ dance. It is performed by a group of men who circle the dance space in single file, carrying drums and lifting each knee high as they locomote. They wear the loose pajama-type clothing associated with rural Koreans, with a helmetlike hat to which is affixed long streamers. At a certain point in the dance, the dancers vigorously rotate their heads so the streamers fly out like whirligigs.

Character dancing is a selected borrowing of folk dance movements and styles to provide divertissements for story ballets. It is a specialization taught as part of the classical ballet curriculum. Along with their rigorous training in ballet academies, dancers are trained to perform so-called character dances that use stereotyped gestures and styles selected to portray the idea of a particular nationality, occupation, or personage. This is exemplified by the Chinese, Spanish, and Arabian divertissements in Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker ballet. When, say, a Polish mazurka is performed by a formally trained classical ballet dancer, that character dance is not considered to be an authentic folk dance by either the dancer or the audience.

Members of the New York City Ballet dance the tarantella from Napoli, choreographed by …

The collectors and their legacy

The first folklorists

John Playford and the preservation of dance

As early as the 17th century, dances performed by rural folk (“country dances”) were collected and distributed through popular publications for public distribution. Typically, country dances are characterized by “longways” formations, in which facing rows of couples walk or skip briskly through maneuvers, instructed by a caller. The 17th-century English music publisher and bookseller John Playford edited and published as many as 900 country dances through seven editions of The English Dancing Master. The first was published in 1651. His work was carried on after his death by his son Henry through the 17th and final edition in 1728; after the first edition the work bore the abridged title The Dancing Master.

Peasant round dance from the Hours of Charles d’Angoule, French, late 15th …

Courtesy of the Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris

The Playford dances are still consulted, especially in the United Kingdom and the United States. Those dances, which were transmitted from person to person before being published, have been preserved in the same form through many generations. The publication allowed a different sort of dancer—a city office worker, perhaps—to perform country dances of another time and place. Questions of whether such dances are folk dances and whether modern groups performing them are folk dancers remain a matter of controversy. But most contemporary groups who dance the country dances consider themselves to be folk dancers and the dances to be folk dances.

The late 18th and 19th centuries were an especially vibrant period in Europe and the Americas. It was a time of intellectual and artistic efflorescence: the Enlightenment, the Industrial Revolution, Nationalism, and Romanticism. People increasingly depended upon the written word to record and convey ideas. Literacy defined a class of people, often even more than family pedigree. Literate persons usually lived in urban areas, a demographic fact that led to the perception of rural people as belonging to a lower class than those from urban areas. At the same time, the complications of urban life made the perceived simplicity of the country attractive.

Johann Gottfried von Herder and the idea of the folk

The late 18th-century German critic, theologian, and philosopher Johann Gottfried von Herder was apparently the first to use the word folk (in German, as Volk) in print. Herder recorded and analyzed Germanic languages at a time when Germany was beginning to emerge as an identifiable political entity from a collection of principalities and city-states. Herder, who was particularly interested in traditional song texts, published collections of old songs from many parts of the world. In his research he discovered many traditional Germanic songs, tales, and customs transmitted by ordinary people who lived customary lifestyles. They were Herder’s Volk. Herder collected folk traditions, including folk dances, to prevent their loss and to encourage nationalistic pride.

Into the 19th century, throughout Europe, more and more agrarian workers emigrated from the farms and small towns to find employment in the new factories of the cities. Those people who still pursued an agrarian lifestyle, often bereft of formal education, were dismissed by the literate as backward, even inferior “folk.” Yet as they seemed in danger of extinction, they became viewed with nostalgia, especially by Romantics in Germany and elsewhere. Their way of life seemed simpler and unspoiled. Collecting the remembered traditions of the folk became a popular and respected activity.

One consequence was the forming of an image of the happy peasant. Painters, writers, musicians, and choreographers portrayed this character in their arts. Musicians wrote “dances” that were not danced. Dance academies often adopted particular movements and whole dances from the idealized folk. (In classical ballet, examples are the pas de basque [“Basque step”] and tour de basque [“Basque turn”], adapted from the steps of Basque dances from the Pyrenees.)

William John Thoms and folkloristics

The English antiquarian William John Thoms (using the pseudonym Ambrose Merton) coined the English word folklore in August 1846, taking credit in a letter to the periodical The Athenaeum.

Four years later, his pride as inventor of the term was restated in Notes and Queries, a weekly publication that he founded in 1849 and edited for 23 years and that continued to be published into the 21st century. Both publications began to accept submissions relating to the preservation of folklore. It is clear from discussions in his periodical that Thoms did not mean anything more specific by folk than “people of older times.”

Two dance games are mentioned repeatedly by the magazine’s correspondents in the 1850–52 period, and they are never associated with class, occupation, education, or residence: “London Bridge Is Broken Down,” for children, and the “Cushion Dance,” for adults. The first may be related to London Bridge, a round-dance game that in its various forms (including “London Bridge Is Falling Down”) continued to be played by children in the early 21st century. The second is a round-dance kissing game in which a solo dancer carries a cushion into the center of a circle of other dancers while they all sing a song. At the end of the song, the solo dancer drops the cushion in front of someone of the opposite sex; the chosen person kneels on the cushion and is kissed by the soloist. The kissed person becomes the soloist, and the previous soloist joins the circle. The action repeats until everyone has been kissed and has danced in the centre. The cushion dance was done at weddings and seems to have been popular in England and Germany.

The correspondents to Notes and Queries, in what was a 19th-century equivalent of a “chat room,” sought to establish the games’ texts and origins. Since the magazine’s beginning, “old-time” dances have been discussed often—dancing games, contra dances, quadrilles, jigs, reels, and so forth. The occasions for dancing, such as Christmas, weddings, and balls, are also mentioned, but the performers are not. The magazine has played an important part in preserving accounts of old dances.

The study of folklore and its variants quickly took hold in scholarly circles in Great Britain and the United States. The term folklore soon acquired a formal discipline of theories and methods for research as well as a forum for the exchange of information and ideas. The discipline was called folkloristics. By 1878 the Folklore Society had been founded in England. In 1888 the American Folklore Society was founded and began to publish the Journal of American Folklore. By 1890 the Folklore Society in England had begun publishing its peer-reviewed journal, Folk-lore. Both societies and their journals were still operating in the 21st century.

By the end of the 19th century, many collectors around the world had been working to document and archive their national folk arts. The 19th-century Polish collector Oskar Kolberg, for example, had published nearly 70 volumes documenting Polish folk dancing; he is but one of dozens of scholars, antiquarians, and visionaries who have a place in the annals of early folk dance scholarship. Following the collectors were revival movements, folk dance societies, museums, and archives.

The 20th-century collectors

Cecil Sharp and the promotion of folk dance

The English musician Cecil Sharp was a teacher and principal of London’s Hampstead Conservatory of Music. According to his colleague and biographer Maud Karpeles, Sharp saw his first English Morris dances in 1899. He was inspired by this experience, having thought previously that English folk songs and dances were extinct.

For the remainder of his life, Sharp collected and promoted English traditional songs and folk dances. He began publishing those songs in 1907, followed by works on Morris dances (five volumes, 1909–13), sword dances of Northern England (three volumes, 1912–13), and country dances (six volumes, 1909–27; the last volumes were posthumous). In 1911 he founded the English Folk Dance Society—complete with a prescribed repertoire, grade levels, and examinations—to train folk dance teachers and demonstrate folk dance performances. The evidence suggests that Sharp believed that the forms he tried to maintain were revivals of ancient dances, originally developed by rural folk from ritual origins.

From 1914 to 1919 Sharp and Karpeles visited the United States. In Appalachian Mountain communities they found many old dances and songs taken to the Americas by settlers of Scottish and Irish ancestry. Some of these were still being performed in England, but others were preserved only in the United States. The most celebrated of these dances Sharp named the “Kentucky Running Set”; it was a longways dance of the country-dance style, in which two lines of dancers facing one another “reel off” so that each couple in turn moves to the beginning of the paired line. In 1915 Sharp encouraged the development of an American branch of the English Folk Dance Society. The Country Dance and Song Society was thus established; it was still active in the early 21st century.

Béla Bartók and ethnographic scholarship

The Hungarian composer Béla Bartók was inspired by the folk music and dances that he collected and analyzed and used as themes in his compositions. As an avid field worker he experienced firsthand the music and dance of Hungary, Slovakia, Romania, Bulgaria, Moldavia, and Yugoslavia, as well as Turkey, Algeria, and Morocco. He was probably the first musicologist to bridge east and west. Although he worked with folk materials throughout his career, from 1912 through 1915 he devoted himself almost entirely to the collection and study of folk music and dances. In the field he enjoyed and participated in the folk culture of his hosts. As a musicologist he recorded with the equipment available at that time, took extensive notes, and analyzed his material in detail. World War I ended his extended collecting expeditions; in 1940 he moved to New York, where he again focused on his ethnomusicological work. Bartók is but one of a long list of distinguished scholars who have researched Hungarian folk dances (another was György Martin). But Bartók ranged farther in his explorations of other eastern European regions, as well as of Arabic and Turkish cultures.

Folk dancers performing during a St. Stephen’s Day event in Eger, Hungary.

Ljubica Janković and Danica Janković and modern scholarship

Two sisters from Serbia, Ljubica Janković (1894–1974) and Danica Janković (1898–1960), devoted much of their lives to collecting and analyzing folk dances from southeastern Europe. Between 1934 and 1964 they published eight volumes and several monographs of dance research. In the work they analyzed about 900 dances, describing choreography, music, and costume. They wrote about the cultural background and preservation of the dances, and, especially noteworthy, they recognized the contribution of “gifted dancers” to the refinement of the dances. The adaptation of a dance for the stage, they felt, took that dance out of the folk realm and made it an adapted dance; they refused to call anything a folk dance except an anonymously created dance performed in traditional settings. The Janković sisters coined the term paraphrased folk dance for adapted dances.

Other scholars continued to struggle with terminology and the differences between dances in traditional cultures and their derivatives in other contexts. In his influential article for the Journal of the International Folk Music Council titled “Once Again: On the Concept of ‘Folk Dance’” (1968), the German folklorist Felix Hoerburger observed that folk dances generally fell into two categories: first, dances that were transmitted through the generations by members of a traditional culture, and second, dances that were derived from the first category but performed by different dancers for different reasons. He labeled these “first existence” and “second existence,” respectively. Although the labels were useful, they presented their own problems. But scholars have yet to agree on a unified approach to researching and analyzing folk dances.

Romani people in Skopje, Maced., doing the the kjelipe, an open-circle dance, during the …

In the early 20th century, social and educational reformers, many of them influenced by the educator John Dewey, foresaw many benefits to the wide teaching of folk dances. At the University of Chicago, Dewey established and directed the experimental Laboratory Schools, which opened in 1896. He championed the use of folk dancing in the classroom as a means of physical education and as an example of what he called art as experience transposed into creative imagination. Several of his students went on to develop his ideas; two of the most successful were Elizabeth Burchenal and Mary Wood Hinman.

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Young people of the United States or Canada doing square dances for the sheer fun of it are folk dancing. So are young people of Mexico performing their traditional dances before an audience of tourists in Mexico City. Yet if the people of these nations had always lived as they do today, they probably would not have any folk dances. The same thing is true of the people in most other countries.

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